If Rhodes and Obama really want to challenge the foreign policy establishment, I suggest they dig up the second inaugural address from George W. Bush. In 2005, he boldly proclaimed that it would no longer be U.S. policy to support dictatorships for the sake of stability, that his administration would support democratic movements all over the world. Bush never implemented that bold vision — in part because the foreign policy establishment had turned on him over his Iraq war. Mandarins such as Baker and Hamilton, with the help of a young Ben Rhodes, did their best to leave Iraq to the mercies of Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia. Bush declined their advice at the time and surged troops. It would take the election of Barack Obama to put in place the establishment’s vision for the Middle East. We are now living with those consequences.
Source: Obama’s Foreign Policy Guru Is the ‘Blob’ He Hates – Bloomberg View
